On July 28, the U.N. Human Rights Committee released
a report that was critical of racial segregation in
public schools in the United States. The report reviews
practices of the United States in regards to the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
a treaty to which the United States is a signatory.
The report
comments and makes recommendations on a number of human
rights issues, including alleged racial discrimination
in the federal government’s response to Hurricane
Katrina and what the Committee called “de facto
racial segregation in public schools.”

Wide Quality Disparities

The Committee’s report points to “discrepancies
between the racial and ethnic composition of large urban
districts and their surrounding suburbs, and the manner
in which school districts are created, funded and regulated.”
The report concludes that these discrepancies result
in “wide disparities in the quality of education”
received by students of different races. The Committee
recommends that the federal government take steps to
remedy these problems, in order to fulfill its obligation
under the ICCPR.

Article 26 of the ICCPR states that “[T]he law
shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all
persons equal and effective protection against discrimination.”
According to the Committee, even if the current system
is not intentionally discriminatory, the language of
the Covenant includes practices that have a discriminatory
effect. Article 2 puts the burden on each signatory
to the treaty to “undertake[] to respect and to
ensure to all individuals…the rights recognized
in the present Covenant.” One hundred forty-nine
countries are signatories to the Covenant.

However, the only strength of the Covenant lies in
its moral force. Though the Senate ratified the treaty
in 1992, it included in the report
on the ratification that “the Covenant will
not create a private cause of action in U.S. Courts.”

Integration Before U.S. Supreme Court

While studies
show that U.S. schools have become more segregated in
recent years, many mandatory desegregation orders have
been lifted, and voluntary integration plans have
faced challenges in federal courts. On June 5, 2006,
the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases involving
school districts where race is a factor in public school
assignments. In one case, a federal appeals court upheld
a system in Seattle that used race as a “tiebreaker”
in determining admission to schools. The other case
was brought against the Jefferson County school district
in Kentucky (which includes Louisville), which was under
a desegregation order from 1974 to 2000 and has used
voluntary measures ever since. Despite plaintiff’s
claim that a student was denied entrance to his neighborhood
school because he was white, the federal appeals court
upheld the integration plan. Arguments are likely to
take place in November.

On July 31, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge
to the voluntary integration plan in place in Lynn,
Massachusetts. In June 2005, the First Circuit Court
of Appeals upheld
Lynn’s plan, which takes the racial composition
of a school into account if a child wishes to attend
a non-neighborhood school.